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Luna
The first planetary body to host permanent human habitation, Earth’s sole moon competes with Titan for the second largest population on a planetary body in the solar system and remains a lynchpin of culture and economic activity. Lunar history has been shaped dramatically by the Fall. Before the need to evacuate Earth arose, it was expected that Luna would remain largely an automated mining concern, never attaining a population of more than a few million. Luna was never seen as an economically viable location for colonization, the focus instead falling on Mars and the outer system. When the Fall came, every polity that couldn’t hope for a shot at Mars or elsewhere set its sights on Luna. The Indians were the only great power that had invested heavily in Luna. The other three major settlements, Erato, Nectar, and Shackle, were multinational and hypercorp concerns with no strong national affiliations. These three cities swelled overnight into polyglot refugee camps, while the Indian settlement, New Mumbai, was nuked black by the corps when it became apparent that a TITAN infection had taken hold there. Bereft of nationhood, Lunars developed their own resourceful, tough-minded culture that emerged as a counterbalance to the radicalism of the outer system and the excesses of Mars. Transportation on Luna is largely by suborbital rocket, although trans-sonic bullet trains also operate along shorter routes. The major space port is at Nectar. There is also a skyhook — a massive orbiting satellite spaceport that drags a massive tether, which acts as a space elevator along a track running across the Lunar surface south of the equator. As a result, many smaller cities lie along the skyhook track. Economy Lunar economy is focused on three sectors: banking, fashion, and Helium-3 mining Fashion/Design Nectar is one of the three fashion/design capitals of the system (along with Noctis on Mars and Extropia). The Lunar design houses have two major advantages: an inventive population and a low planetary gravity that makes it easier to design for the low gravities that prevail in much of the system. Some habitats elsewhere in the system even choose a rotational speed that simulates Lunar gravity in order to get the greatest benefit from Lunar designs. Finance The Lunar banks are the oldest (and thus richest) in the system, though hypercorps like Solaris are close on their heels. Interestingly, the rise of the reputation economy in the outer system has not presented as much of a problem for these banks as one might have expected. Lunar banks got hip to the reputation game long before the Martian financial institutions and moved in to capitalize on it immediately. By the time Martian banks knew what was going on, Lunar financial institutions had struck deals with the Extropians and dominated all of the points of exchange where favors could be bartered for cold, hard cash between inner system corp types and outer system anarchists. The same genius fueling Lunar design created a complex barter-to-cash network that almost everyone uses. While some autonomists find it infuriating that they have to deal with a monolithic banking system to get by in the inner system, others are simply happy to deal with the Lunars instead of the Martians for this service. Helium-3 Mining Although it’s not the richest place to mine He-3, Luna has such good infrastructure for extraction and distribution that it more than makes up for the fact that Luna is very poor in hydrogen for more conventional forms of fusion. Unlike the vast reserves of the gas giants, however, the amount of readily extractable He-3 in the Lunar regolith is finite. Some of the richer deposits are already tapped out, and concerned Lunars consider their world’s future after these deposits are exhausted a major issue. Habitats Surface Habitats * Erato * Nectar * Shackle Orbital Habitats (none described yet) Also see Earth for habitats which are in the Earth-Lunar Lagrange points. Category:Setting Category:Gazeteer Category:Solar System Category:Core Book